Battlefield Earth (film)
Battlefield Earth (subtitled on-screen: A Saga of the Year 3000) is a 2000 American science fiction film based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. It was directed by Roger Christian and stars John Travolta, Barry Pepper, and Forest Whitaker. The film follows a rebellion against the alien Psychlos, who have ruled Earth for 1,000 years.
Battlefield Earth
- Corey Mandell
- J. D. Shapiro
- John Travolta
- Barry Pepper
- Forest Whitaker
- Kim Coates
- Richard Tyson
- Sabine Karsenti
Robin Russelle
- May 10, 2000 (Grauman's Chinese Theatre)
- May 12, 2000 (United States)
117 minutes[2]
United States
English
$73 million[3]
$29.7 million[3]
Travolta, a Scientologist, began attempting to adapt Battlefield Earth in the mid-1990s. He was unable to obtain major studio funding because of concerns regarding the script and its connections to Scientology. In 1998, it was picked up by the independent production company Franchise Pictures, which specialized in rescuing stars' pet projects. Production began in 1999, largely funded by the German distribution company Intertainment AG. Travolta, as co-producer, also contributed millions of dollars; he envisioned Battlefield Earth as the first in a two-part adaptation of the book, as it only covers the first half of the novel's story.
The film was universally panned by critics who criticized nearly every aspect of the film, including the performances, direction, screenplay, cinematography, special effects, pacing and plot. Released to a critical and commercial failure, it is frequently described as one of the worst films of all time and the worst received film in John Travolta's filmography.[4][5][6][7] Audiences were reported to have ridiculed early screenings and stayed away from the film after its opening weekend. It received eight Golden Raspberry Awards, the most given to any film. This record stood until 2012 when Jack and Jill received ten. In 2010, it won Worst Picture of the Decade.
In 2007, Franchise Pictures was sued by its investors and went bankrupt after it emerged that it had fraudulently overstated the film's budget by $31 million;[8] this, coupled with the film's poor reception, ended Travolta's plans for a sequel.
Plot[edit]
In 3000 AD, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler lives in the Rocky Mountains with a band of cave-dwellers who fear the "demons" that rule Earth. Skeptical of these stories, he rides into the lowlands, where two hunters show him a desolate and overgrown city. While exploring it, he is captured by the demons, a cruel alien species called Psychlos, and taken as a slave to a base in the ruins of Denver. The base is covered with an enormous dome that provides the Psychlos with a breathable atmosphere. Jonnie shows resourcefulness in captivity, drawing the respect of the other human slaves and the attention of Terl, the high-born Earth security chief.
Terl learns from a visiting supervisor that his temporary assignment on Earth will be extended indefinitely as punishment for offending a politician. Desperate to leave, he hatches a plan with his assistant Ker. They know about a recently exposed gold deposit in an area with elevated radiation levels. Gold is valuable to the Psychlos, who have been reporting losses from their mining operations, but radiation causes their air mixture to explode. Terl and Ker will train humans to mine the gold, and Terl will use part of it to bribe his way off the planet.
Terl places Jonnie in a learning machine that rapidly teaches him Psychlo language and technology. Jonnie shares his knowledge with other slaves while hiding it from Terl and Ker. After Jonnie stages an unsuccessful escape attempt, Terl takes him to the Denver Library hoping to impress him that human knowledge is no match for the Psychlos. Jonnie reads the Declaration of Independence and is inspired to seek not only escape but reconquest. Jonnie's fiancée Chrissy is captured while searching for him and fitted with an explosive collar. Terl tells Jonnie that she will be killed if he does not obey.
Believing that the slaves are subdued, Terl blackmails the planet administrator to let him order the gold mining operation. Jonnie receives further training to pilot aircraft and is sent to the mining site with a team. He leaves half of them to pretend to work while the other half gather abandoned human weapons and take gold from Fort Knox to pass off as mining production. At Jonnie's urging, Ker tries to blackmail Terl for a greater share of the gold, but Terl detects the attempt and shoots off Ker's hand in retaliation.
The humans launch their revolt, assaulting the base while using Harrier jets to combat the Psychlo air defenses and explosives to rupture the dome. Terl orders the execution of all humans and alerts the Psychlo homeworld to teleport a termination force. As the teleporter activates, Jonnie fights with Terl, reattaching Chrissy's collar to his arm and tricking him into detonating it. A human rides the teleporter to the homeworld with a nuclear weapon. The fallout from the weapon incinerates the atmosphere, causing the entire planet to explode.
At Fort Knox, Jonnie gloats at a captive Terl, telling him that the surviving Psychlos will pay any price for him after they learn that his scheme led to their defeat. Ker agrees to teach Psychlo technology to the humans and gloats along with them.
Parodies[edit]
South Park parodied the film at the 2000 MTV Movie Awards.[128][129] The MTV short was the first time South Park had satirized Scientology, in a piece titled "The Gauntlet". The short was primarily a Gladiator parody, with the characters fighting Russell Crowe in the Roman Colosseum; it included "John Travolta and the Church of Scientology" arriving in a spaceship to defeat Crowe and attempting to recruit the boys into Scientology. Travolta, along with his fellow Scientologists, was depicted as a Psychlo, as he appeared in the film.[129]
Fraud by Franchise Pictures[edit]
Following the failure of Battlefield Earth and other films independently produced by Franchise Pictures, The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI was probing "the question of whether some independent motion picture companies have vastly inflated the budget of films in an effort to scam investors".[130] In December 2000 the German-based Intertainment AG filed a lawsuit alleging that Franchise Pictures had fraudulently inflated budgets in films including Battlefield Earth, which Intertainment had helped to finance.[131] Intertainment had agreed to pay 47% of the production costs of several films in exchange for European distribution rights, but ended up paying for between 60 and 90% of the costs instead. The company alleged that Franchise had defrauded it to the tune of over $75 million by systematically submitting "grossly fraudulent and inflated budgets".[132]
The case was heard before a jury in a Los Angeles federal courtroom in May–June 2004. The court heard testimony from Intertainment that according to Franchise's bank records the real cost of Battlefield Earth was $44 million, not the $75 million declared by Franchise. The remaining $31 million had been fraudulent "padding". Intertainment's head Barry Baeres told the court that he had only funded Battlefield Earth because it was packaged as a slate that included two more commercially attractive films, the Wesley Snipes vehicle The Art of War and the Bruce Willis comedy The Whole Nine Yards.[28] Baeres testified that "Mr. Samaha said, 'If you want the other two pictures, you have to take Battlefield Earth — it's called packaging'". Baeres commented: "We would have been quite happy if he had killed [Battlefield Earth]".[133]
Intertainment won the case and was awarded $121.7 million in damages. Samaha was declared by the court to be personally liable for $77 million in damages.[8][134] The jury rejected Intertainment's claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statute, which would have tripled the damages if Franchise had been convicted on that charge.[135] The judgment forced Franchise into bankruptcy on August 19, 2007.[136][8] The failure of the film was also reported to have led in 2002 to Travolta firing his manager Jonathan Krane, who had set up the deal with Franchise in the first place.[137]
Cancelled follow-ups and sequels[edit]
Battlefield Earth is significantly shorter than its source novel, covering only the first 436 pages of the 1,050-page book.[138] A sequel covering the remainder of the book was originally planned at the outset.[45][138] When asked during promotion of the film if there would be a Battlefield Earth 2, Travolta responded, "Sure. Yeah."[96][139] Travolta asserted that the first film would become a cult classic, stating that there were already fan websites dedicated to the film.[139] Corey Mandell, the scriptwriter for the first film, was commissioned to deliver the script for the sequel, and Travolta, Pepper and producer Krane were all signed up to the sequel in their contracts for the first film.[138] Christian and Whitaker were approached to reprise their respective roles, and the producers planned for a 2003 release date so as not to compete with George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.[138][140]
Despite Travolta's initial commitment to a sequel, such plans never came to fruition. According to James Robert Parish's Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops, the disastrous performance of Battlefield Earth and the collapse of Franchise Pictures made it very unlikely that a live-action sequel would be made.[8] In a 2001 interview, Travolta stated that a sequel was not planned: "Ultimately the movie did $100 million when you count box office, DVD sales, video, and pay per view ... But I don't know what kind of number it would have to do to justify filming the second part of the book. And I don't want to push any buttons in the press and stir anybody up about it now."[141] Author Services announced in 2001 that Pine Com International, a Tokyo-based animation studio, would produce 13 one-hour animated television segments based on the book and rendered in a manga style.[142] The plans appear to have fallen through, and according to Parish, "little has been heard of the series since."[8]